Why is it so hard to talk about caring for aging parents?

Monday evening this week.
I received a call from my sister.

"Dad isn't feeling well, he was taken by ambulance and admitted to the hospital."

He gets hospitalized once or twice a year, so
I wasn't that surprised by the word "ambulance" itself.

However, Dad is in his late 80s now.

The fact that he is at an age where anything could happen at any time is always somewhere in the back of my mind.

His diagnosis is pneumonia, pulmonary emphysema, and hydrocephalus.

These are all conditions he has been treated for before, but
because he had pneumonia this time, I had a bit of a bad feeling.

The next day, Tuesday.
I explained the situation to my boss at work, left early in the afternoon, and headed to the hospital.

Dad, who was in the hospital room, looked weaker and less energetic than usual.

But he was able to talk.

"The hospital food is terrible."
"I want to go to the bathroom, but they tell me to hold it because I'm on oxygen."
"They keep making me drink barley tea."

He was spilling out these complaints one by one.

But that actually made me feel a little relieved.

Because I thought, "Ah, he's still himself."

After leaving the room, I checked his symptoms and the expected length of his stay with the nurse,
and she said that once his oxygen levels stabilize, he will likely be discharged in about two weeks.

I felt a little relieved.

However, as a practical matter, my sister has been doing almost all of the care for Dad until now.

Considering the distance from my home,
I felt that I should do as much as I can at times like this.

I want my sister to get some rest, too.

But you don't really hear about these "family caregiving situations" at work.

Of course, maybe people just aren't talking about it.

But in reality, it's hard for people who haven't experienced it to understand talk about caregiving.

The anxiety of a parent suddenly collapsing.
The feeling of bracing yourself for a call from the hospital.
Balancing it with work.
Sharing roles with siblings.
The difficulty of long-distance caregiving.
Financial issues.
And the endless feeling of "what will happen from here on out."

These are all things you only understand once you are actually in that position.

That is why, every time something happens to my parents, I wonder.

How is everyone else actually getting through this?

Are they leaving it to a facility?
Are they handling it only within the family?
Are they able to go and see them properly?

There are actually many things I want to share.

Caregiving is by no means a story limited to special families.

It is a reality that could happen to anyone's home someday.

And yet, it is surprisingly rarely discussed in the workplace.

There are people who worry, get exhausted, and
end up quitting their jobs because they have no one to consult.

Isn't that just too unreasonable?

I feel like there should be an atmosphere where we can talk naturally about "family caregiving"
more in the workplace,

and more in society as a whole.

And I hope that for anyone currently in the midst of caregiving,

there will be more places where they can think,

"I'm not alone."